Essendon have at last accepted a range of penalties offered by the AFL in the wake of the supplements scandal that has soured seemingly every moment of the 2013 AFL season.

The Bombers have copped a $2m fine, an effective four-month suspension to their football operations manager, Danny Corcoran, and a $30,000 fine for senior assistant Mark Thompson. Coach James Hird will serve a 12-month ban from the game, backdated to 25 August, meaning that he could theoretically be back coaching the Bombers come finals time in 2014.

Less sensationally, veteran club doctor Bruce Reid will return to AFL House at 10am on Thursday to contest his case. The results of Reid’s hearing are less pertinent to the machinations of the AFL world but have desperately serious implications for his own career and reputation. Essendon continue to support him in his quest to clear his own name.

As has been the case throughout the seven-month soap opera, a scrum of reporters milled around outside AFL House for two full days looking for different ways to say, “We think a decision is imminent,” and searching for synonyms of “galvanised” and “saga”. In the long, frustrating hours prior to details of the 8:15pm press conference emerging, the appearance of sandwiches briefly seemed like a development.

Once the AFL Commission chairman, Mike Fitzpatrick, finally delivered the Bombers their sanctions, football fans were afforded their first substantive moment of closure on a scandal that has sullied an entire season. The league that prides itself on becoming bigger and better by the year handed out the heftiest financial penalty of its history. In addition to the various legal and consultancy costs incurred by Essendon as their season descended into infamy, that financial haymaker will be a significant burden. By the time Fitzpatrick was addressing cameras next to an ashen-faced league chief executive Andrew Demetriou, the Bombers were already offering fans the chance to lighten that load and pre-pay their 2014 memberships.

Of more pressing concern to the club’s football department and list managers, the spectre of lost draft picks has now become an uncomfortable reality. The Dons will be barred from the first two rounds of the upcoming 2013 AFL draft as well as in 2014, though were granted the small consolation of an end of round one selection in 2014. There will be no restrictions on them “trading into” the draft, though the remaining threat of ongoing investigations would doubtlessly affect the currency of any player they chose to put on the trade table. It’s hard to see the fallout of those lost picks having such dire implications as similar sanctions placed on a lowly Carlton in 2002, but the knock-on effects will be myriad and injurious to the club’s on-field prospects.

The result of the negotiations also amounted to a backdown from Hird. Having been so steadfast in the desire to clear his own name and avoid the implication that he’d intentionally done anything wrong, with this surrender his copybook is effectively blotted. It was an admission that Hird and the club had brought the game into disrepute and that damage had been done. Fitzpatrick pointedly spoke of, “the anger and frustration” caused by the affair, adding: “I want to send a clear and unequivocal message: that nothing and no one comes ahead of the duty of care of players.” Though Hird was already on his way home by the time those words began to flow, the gravity of this public dressing-down filled living rooms throughout the country.

In response, the Essendon chairman, Paul Little, apologised and publicly accepted the commission’s range of penalties. Little then said: “James Hird told the commission tonight that he took responsibility for the club’s shortcoming.” The tenor of that statement seemed loaded with a new narrative: that Hird was taking one for the team and doing the time on behalf of his beloved club. In the eyes of many, it was a martyrdom that probably awaited by Hird no matter what the outcome.

The AFL itself interviewed 130 witnesses and reviewed some 13,000 documents in the investigation. That number that may compare favourably with the amount of column inches devoted to the story, but the scandal has been the league’s as equally as Essendon and Hird’s. That the investigation and sanctions should result in the Bombers contesting only one “dead rubber” game will provide endless fodder to the sceptics. Cynicism will also abound at the decision to demote the Bombers to ninth place rather than the foot of the ladder.

The penalties handed to Essendon are significant, but they will not greatly affect gate attendances or broadcast agreements and in that sense the league can be seen to have played the situation like a well-tuned Stradivarius. That one powerful fan base should not find the tune palatable is merely the cost of doing very lucrative business.

What happens now is not clear. Bombers assistant coach Simon Goodwin will take the reins against Richmond on Saturday night, but the club has to find someone to keep Hird’s chair warm for the coming year. There is every indication that he will return as soon as his suspension is served. For the players, the pressure of the Asada investigation remains. For all Hird’s unwillingness to suffer the stain of guilt by his submission to a suspension there is no such measure of finality or closure for his players. Many apparently didn’t know what they were taking and they now have even less idea of what they’ll be getting.

Soon enough the flashbulbs directed at Hird will lessen, the tawdry sense of theatre recede, but in the books of record and the enduring memories of fans, his and Essendon’s once imposing stature is now diminished.